It's All Relevant

The word itself implies a sort of default state—a way things should be. A state is described by the absence of something important. But the longer I am single, the more I wonder about this word.

It’s been nearly 15 months since my last D/s relationship ended. At first, “unowned” described perfectly the aching void left in me without the structure of our dynamic. I had no one to ask for permission. No one to make sure I went to bed on time. No one craved my ever-deepening submission. It was the absence of so many things—not just ownership or love, but truly a loss of identity. What is a submissive when they are unable to serve?

I used to say that I’m a relationship person—that my happiness depends on my connection to another. And frankly, I never bought into the idea that you have to be happy as a single person before you can be in a healthy relationship. Some people just aren’t meant for single life. As a submissive, part of me has always felt incomplete without ownership. When your sense of purpose and fulfillment relies on serving and obeying another, being single can feel empty. It’s right there in the word. Unowned.

But over time, the aching void of "unownership" faded. I learned to live as a single person. And now I just feel…fine. No, really. At first, I knew I wasn’t ready to submit. Now I’m just not sure I need to. Submission feels like another me in another lifetime. That girl was so sure of her needs that she turned her life upside down for a chance at fulfilling them. Have my needs changed, or have I just been unfulfilled for so long that I’m numb to them? Am I walking around, unaware that the color has drained from my world? Am I actively looking away from the color, too terrified of what it might mean? Too afraid to get hurt, too afraid to make the wrong choice, too afraid to feel so deeply and give so much of me.

Either way, my submission feels so far away most days. It feels abstract. I have rebuilt my life and my heart so much in the last 18 months that I nearly feel like I new person. But maybe under all of this newness, there’s still a little girl waiting for the right moment to kneel. A friend once told me that these things are like balloons—you can hold them under the water, but they always fight their way to the surface again. I guess time will tell.

But that word—unowned—no longer feels like part of me. I am not defined by the absence of something; I am the presence of many somethings. And I have to trust that those "somethings" will lead me down the right path, whether I am meant to kneel or not.

~cherishedproperty

There is an infinite number of ways to lose someone you love. It could be to disloyalty, abusive behavior, or tragedy, or even the cold, cruel march of time, but no matter the cause, the aftermath is always the same, you feel like you are at the point of breaking and the only one who can hold you together is gone. With nothing else to hold onto and no place to go, you cling to the memory and make a home of a ghost, mourning every passing moment driving them further from you as days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months.

Welcome, this is rock bottom, but what you may have forgotten is that rock bottom is the foundation on which you can be remade. The truth is, all pain can be reshaped and repurposed. With the right care, all wounds will heal back more resilient than before. When the heart is shattered, you can create something beautiful from the fragments. Where there is some lesson there is never a loss.

Listen carefully to your healing, give it room to do its work. Allow yourself the space to feel grief when it calls on you too, but also permission to feel joy in those rare moments warmth returns to your heart. When you make the choice not to fight the currents of your feelings you allow them to take you where they need to and moving forward becomes a gentler process. Embrace your sadness. Meet it head-on. It is a source of strength that can be drawn from and directed wherever you choose. Use it to create art, chase down a dream, or make a life change you’ve been neglecting. Loss will reshape you either way, but you decide what shape it leaves you in.

Remember always to move at your own pace. When you attempt to hurry yourself through a loss you don’t escape the grief, you bury it, and one day it will find a way back to the surface. Only you can know the distance of your healing and only you can know when you have arrived.

So be patient, be tender, and take your strength where you can. Listen to your sad songs when you need them and face the world when you feel brave. Your pain doesn’t have to be your prison, remember that. It can be a key to a doorway and you decide where it leads.

— Beau Taplin • T h e S h a p e O f L o s s

There are things I need. I need the rules. I need the structure. Sometimes I desperately need the pain. I need the pride in his eyes like I need the blood in my veins. I need to kneel at his feet and know that I want him to do whatever he needs. I need to know he’s present. I need to be his safe place. His release. I need to feel his desire. His need for me. I need to crawl if he wishes and be the one who makes him forget the world. I need to be in his arms at night and I need to be…. His. I need his decisions. I need his confidence. I need his passion. I need his anger and I need his joy. I need to feel wanted and I need to be loved. I need to be a priority. I need to give to him every single part of myself.

But I need him to earn it.

@haveuseenmyhalo

I hold his hand like it's a lifeline. I pull it into me memorizing it. Tracing it with my fingers. Every scar. Every vein. I place my palm into his palm and it gets lost by the enormity of it. It looks fragile and safe against his. Our fingers intertwine and I squeeze. I like them together. I pull him to my lips and kiss the top of his gorgeous hand while looking into those eyes. Inhaling him. I don't want to let go.

I ran my fingers over the memories. The pages of our yesterday’s lifted, curling toward me. I plucked one up, closed my eyes, and allowed its entry. The image formed, wisps weaving themselves into color and detail. Friendship turned, shifting to a desire unlike any I had experienced. Dark eyes alight with laughter, lips twisting in a smile. Hands drifting over my body, fingers tracing my curves. The rising passion swallowing pupils, bodies pressed close. Sighs and whispers collided. Emotion swelled, pulsed, breathing life into us, until like a wave breaking, it crashed, sucking us under. I watched as we emerged, bruised and wary. Watched as we walked away, going separate directions, miles and years stretching between us. I collected the memory, gently tucking it away. Memories fade and shift. The sands of Time blur and smudge the sharp, painful edges allowing the view to be softer. I dipped my fingers into the past and let it play....-

~Wandersoften

I choose not to look upon the fact that I am healthy, have food in my refrigerator, and have clean water to drink as givens. They are not givens to so many people in our world. The fact that I am safe and (relatively) sane is not givens. That I was born into a family who loves me and into a country not ravaged by war are not givens. It is impossible to name all of the circumstances in my life I've taken for granted. All of the basic needs I've had met, all of the friendships and job opportunities and financial blessings, and the list, truly, is endless. The fact that I am breathing is a miracle, one I too rarely stop to appreciate.
I'm stopping, right now, to be grateful for everything I am and everything I've been given. I'm stopping, right now, to be grateful for every pleasure and every pain that has contributed to the me who sits here and writes these words.
I am thankful for my life. This moment is a blessing. Each breath is a gift. That I've been able to take so much for granted is a gift, too. But it's not how I want to live—not when gratitude is an option, not when wonder and awe are choices.
I choose gratitude. I choose wonder. I choose awe. I choose everything that suggests I'm opening myself to the miraculous reality of simply being alive for one moment more

Happy Thanksgiving to you All.

**Photo Taken By Me

This is what I know: in this life, steady love and a place to call home are far more precious than all the earthly possessions and wealth in the world.”

“Falling for someone isn’t a process. You can’t plan for it in advance or anticipate its arrival. Love strikes in single moments. Anywhere. Anytime. Some day you catch them gardening in the sun, or singing dreadfully in the shower, and you think, ‘oh, I could spend all my life with you.’”

“I need to move around a bit. To shuffle my surroundings. To wake up in cities I don’t know my way around and have conversations in languages I cannot entirely comprehend. There is always this tremendous longing in my heart to be lost, to be someplace else, and to be far far away from all this.”

“I am deathly afraid of almosts. Of coming so close to where I want to be in life that I can almost taste it, almost touch it, then fall just a little short.”

“I like to think that loneliness is just the echo of missing a person you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting quite yet.”

“There are people who you will love until the end. Certain feelings are too powerful to perish and quietly survive on in the heart for a lifetime. No matter how much we change or drift apart, in some small way, you will always be mine, and I will always be yours.”

“Everyone you meet has a part to play in your story. and while some may take a chapter, others a paragraph, and most will be no more than scribbled notes in the margins, someday, you’ll meet someone who will become so integral to your life, you’ll put their name in the title.”

“I plant roots so deeply in the people I love that I always lose a piece of myself when they go.”

~Beau Taplin

* The Fuse ~ Jackson Browne ~ The Pretender
* Laura ~ Bat For Lashes ~ The Haunted Man
* Go Walking Down ~ Chris Issak ~ Forever Blue
* Not About Love ~ Fiona Apple ~ Extraordinary Machine
* Sex & Candy ~ Marcy Playground ~ Marcy Playground
* 32 Flavors ~ Ani DiFranco ~ Not A Pretty Girl
* Broken Bones & Pocket Change ~ St Paul & The Broken Bones~ Half The City
* I Aint Superstitious ~ Jeff Beck ~ Truth
* To Be Young ( Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High) ~Ryan Adams ~ Heartbreaker
* Long Time Gone~ Crosby, Stills, Nash~ Crosby, Stills, Nash

What Getting Chills from Music Says About Your Brain

Music seems to have a primal hold on us, reaching the very core of what it means to be human and reminding us that we are all small-town girls, living in lonely worlds. And when it finally hits that chorus, you know that you'll never stop believing. We have chills — do you have chills? If so, you might have a very special kind of brain.
 
A Sensory Superpower
 
As it turns out, getting chills from music is not as common as you might think. Researchers from USC released a study that suggests that only about 50 percent of people feel things like shivers, a lump in their throat, and goosebumps when they listen to music. What's more, those people might have very different brains than those who don't experience those feelings.
 
First, they gathered 20 people and had them listen to a selection of their favorite songs. Whenever they felt a chill, they pressed a button. All 20 were then given MRI scans — and the 10 that reported reactions were obvious standouts. Their brains turned out to have a much higher volume of fibers connecting their auditory cortex to the areas that process emotion.
 
More fibers mean that those two areas of the brain can communicate much more effectively. It also means that, because their emotional processing centers are beefier, those people are more able to experience extreme emotions.
 
A Feeling of Frisson
 
This study might shed a light on the causes of the phenomenon, but it's been well documented for years. Actually, it even has a name. The phenomenon of chills or goosebumps that come from a piece of music (or from any other aesthetic experience) is called frisson, and it's been one of the big mysteries of human nature since it was first described.
 
That's because even if we know the actual mechanism that causes frisson — a close connection to the emotional processing center — we don't know what purpose it could serve us. But other studies have suggested some potential benefits of this kind of behavior.
 
One report from 2007 found that individuals who experience frisson are more open to new experiences than others, and other studies described higher levels of creativity and intellectual curiosity. In other words, the appreciation of beauty is central to what makes us human, and frisson is just a super-charged version of that appreciation.

My early beliefs about D/s were shaped by a series of pretty emotionally abusive relationships. And by shit, I read in the weird crevices of the internet. For a long time, I didn’t know any better.

Pair that with the fact that I’m a perfectionist and you got some pretty dicey situations. And I’m not talking oh, I like to do well - I’m talking a nearly pathological need to be perfect.

I used to think the perfect sub would take whatever they were given and beg for more. I used to think the perfect sub would never have to use their safeword. I used to think the perfect sub was always willing, ready, and available.

I used to think the perfect sub didn’t have limits. Or that if they did then they’d happily push and test and abandon those limits to please their Dom(me).

I used to think the perfect sub didn’t make waves, didn’t ask for too much and didn’t need more than what they were given.

I used to think the perfect sub was focused entirely on the relationship and on pleasing their Dom(me) and that nothing was ever - EVER - more important than that.

I used to think the perfect sub was pleasing, quiet, agreeable, soft, and pliant. Always. Without exception.

But now I know better.

The perfect sub has limits and safewords when it gets to be too much. The perfect sub is not afraid to safeword whenever and whoever they need to.

The perfect sub has needs and speaks up about those needs because they know that their Dom(me) is not a mind reader.

The perfect sub has expectations and requirements and beliefs that they bring to the relationship. The perfect sub has deal-breakers and things that will not be negotiated.

The perfect sub is not always ready, not always willing, and not always available - and that’s okay.

The perfect sub has a life and focuses outside of the relationship. The perfect sub has interests and hobbies and friends and a life. And sometimes that life requires attention.

The perfect sub doesn’t necessarily like everything that’s depicted in porn. The perfect sub can’t necessarily deepthroat or take a spanking or be tied up in elaborate positions.

The perfect sub knows that communication is key. And knows that it’s okay to stand up for themselves. And knows that their Dom(me) is not a god but a human.

And the perfect sub is human too. Which means that they’re not really perfect at all.

And that’s okay.

I’m learning.

~DirtyLittleBookworm

I chose this photo as my "shiver " because it kind of speaks for itself.

This photo makes me "Shudder" as well.

Finally, this last photo caught my attention and I would be "Purring" in delight to be the kitten in the image.